Stay Free - Russel Brand - April 06, 2023


Aaron Maté (The convenient framing of US politics)


Episode Stats

Length

19 minutes

Words per Minute

177.58186

Word Count

3,525

Sentence Count

220

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary

On this episode of Stay Free With Russell Brand, Russell Brand talks about the Trump trial and how it distracts us from important global events like Finland joining NATO, and speaks to conspiracy theorist Aaron Maté about that at length. He also talks about why he thinks the Trump case is being exaggerated, and why we should all be obsessed with the way CNN reporter scrutinizes Trump's face in order to divine anger as if it was some hidden stream being pursued by a rod. And, of course, there's a special guest appearance from Russell Brand's dog, Bear, who's trying to help us figure out what's going on in the world and why it's a good idea to pause the news when it's all going so fast. Stay Free with Russell Brand is a new podcast hosted by comedian, writer, podcaster, and podcaster Russell Brand. It's a place where you can come together and talk about anything and everything, including politics, pop culture, and pop culture. Stay free, stay free, and stay free. Stay free! Thank you for listening to Stay Free! -RUMBLE. Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. Download MP3 by Anchor.fm/Stay Free. If you like what you hear, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe, Like, and tell a friend about what you're listening to this podcast and/or share it on your favourite streaming platform. We'll be looking out for more like this in the next episode of RUMBLE! Subscribe to stay free with us on Podul, and we'll be listening to your favourite podulpodcasts! Thanks for listening and spreading the word out to your friends and sharing it around the world! Love Ghosted. -Podcasts? -Gareth, Gav, Gave it out on your feed, Gorms, and Gave It Out on Insta: & Gave Me a Reviewed It Out? - Thank You, Sarah Marshall, Geezy, Jake, Sarah, Jack, Jake, - Jack, Glynch, Matt, Glynn, Rachael, Jeezy & Glyn, Jaxon, JB, & Sarah, & Jack, Jadyn, R.B., - Jack, B. B.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello there, you awakening wonders.
00:00:02.000 Thanks for joining me on Rumble for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:00:05.000 If you're watching this on YouTube right now, join us on Rumble, particularly after about 10, 15 minutes or so, where we will be using freedom of speech to say the most uncanny, absurd, and ultimately truthful things.
00:00:17.000 Things that might not please the establishment, but will certainly present opportunities for you to awaken, form new alliances, and ultimately new systems that will replace This corrupt carnival that's taking place even now, particularly around Donald Trump's arraignment and ongoing criminalization.
00:00:36.000 We'll be talking about the criminalization of Trump and how it distracts us from significant global events like Finland joining NATO and speaking to Aaron Maté about that at length.
00:00:47.000 Aaron Maté, our fellow conspiracy theorist and far right wing, not just right wing, Far right.
00:00:54.000 We see, we look over our shoulder, there's Mussolini, Oswald Mosley, and the big little guy.
00:01:01.000 They're just back there going, come back!
00:01:03.000 Come back to neoliberalism!
00:01:06.000 Come back to the lack of inquiry that passes for mainstream media reporting.
00:01:11.000 How are you today, on-screen assistant, Mr Gareth?
00:01:13.000 Yes, very well, very well.
00:01:14.000 Oh, you feel quite well, do you?
00:01:16.000 How are your old biochemical and immune systems holding up?
00:01:19.000 Doing alright.
00:01:20.000 Thanks, Ross.
00:01:20.000 Fortunately, this is a period of grind, of sustained broadcast.
00:01:28.000 How you know that the Trump trial is being exaggerated is the fetishisation and amplification of the smallest detail.
00:01:38.000 Have a listen.
00:01:39.000 to this reporter trying to discern and diagnose anger from the side of someone's head like using it still listen to it like I mean I've been obsessively in love with people over the course of my love life over the course of my life I've been obsessively in love with people but I've I've never, like, scrutinized a person's face, like, trying to discern some sort of real emotion in quite the manner that this CNN reporter scrutinizes Trump, trying to divine anger as if it was some hidden stream being pursued by a rod.
00:02:12.000 Let's have a look.
00:02:13.000 If we could go back to the picture that we just showed a second ago, he was looking off to the distance.
00:02:18.000 He looked really irritated and annoyed.
00:02:21.000 It was a profile photo that we just showed.
00:02:23.000 There it is.
00:02:26.000 The one before, that wasn't it.
00:02:28.000 Oh no, that wasn't it.
00:02:28.000 It's this one.
00:02:29.000 This one, see?
00:02:30.000 It's very distinct, this one.
00:02:32.000 Look at, like, that, like, also, wouldn't you just freeze someone?
00:02:35.000 Like, and actually, one of the ways that I can tell a really good actor in a movie is, you know, sometimes when you press pause in a movie, not for any nefarious or onanistic reason, you're just pausing it because you do now, the same way as you watch everything with subtitles on now, the way the world's all changed and everything.
00:02:48.000 Do you watch everything with subtitles?
00:02:49.000 I actually do, yeah.
00:02:50.000 It's weird, isn't it?
00:02:50.000 We do what everyone does.
00:02:52.000 Like, when you pause it... That's my dog, Bear.
00:02:54.000 Bear!
00:02:55.000 Stop it!
00:02:56.000 Stop it, Bear.
00:02:56.000 We're trying to understand the news.
00:02:57.000 You might as well analyse Bear doing that now and say that that has got some sort of mythic, archetypal connotation.
00:03:04.000 Something I would do, actually.
00:03:05.000 Staring off into the distance, as he was.
00:03:06.000 Bear, staring off into the distance.
00:03:08.000 Could it be because of these dog treats?
00:03:10.000 Or is it because he knows that he made an illegal payment to Stormzy Daniels?
00:03:16.000 There he goes.
00:03:18.000 What the hell was that hush money all about, damn you?
00:03:21.000 Was it a misdemeanor or a felony?
00:03:23.000 It's a felony.
00:03:23.000 It might have started as a misdemeanor, but by God, we're going to amplify it.
00:03:27.000 It'll be a felony by the time we've finished with it.
00:03:30.000 It's either amplify this to a felony or address the fact that our political movement offers no meaningful alternatives to systemic corruption.
00:03:37.000 And we ain't going to be doing that anytime soon.
00:03:39.000 Yeah, if you pause a film, you can tell.
00:03:40.000 Like, say if you pause Daniel Day-Lewis, probably at any moment in there will be blood.
00:03:45.000 You'll always be sort of going, Hey!
00:03:47.000 My milkshake!
00:03:49.000 I stole... I mean, he'll always be being that dude.
00:03:52.000 Sure.
00:03:52.000 Like, you won't catch him just sort of going, what's that?
00:03:56.000 That's the mark of a good actor, I'd say.
00:03:58.000 I imagine that was what you did on the set of... I'm another example.
00:04:01.000 Sure, Sarah Marshall.
00:04:02.000 Sarah Marshall, Arthur, the one where I'm a rabbit, the one where I'm a mouse, the one where I'm a troll.
00:04:07.000 The one where you kiss Dalek Baldwin.
00:04:08.000 The Baldwin one.
00:04:10.000 Any one of those, you pause me, I'm conveying exactly the right emotion.
00:04:13.000 I hope you understand life a bit better now, having seen that, having heard us explain to you how abstract ideas, like, you know, you will own nothing and you'll be happy, can gently become implemented as policy, and how the financial industry are now able to enter into territories that would have been unthinkable just 10, 15 years ago and how 2008, a financial crisis for many of you, was a financial opportunity for some of the world's most powerful interests.
00:04:40.000 It's just an ongoing theme.
00:04:43.000 Gareth, it's exciting.
00:04:45.000 Another day, another Maté.
00:04:48.000 I like to speak to at least one member of the Maté family every single day of my life.
00:04:55.000 Today, we're speaking to the friend of the show, a journalist for the Grey Zone and co-host of the Useful Idiots podcast, Aaron Maté, conspiracy theorist, far right pundit, probably far, far right.
00:05:08.000 If we're far right, he's got, I don't know where he is on that particular spectrum.
00:05:13.000 He has the honour of being known by The Guardian as the most prolific spreader of disinformation.
00:05:17.000 So let's, while we're having this conversation, carefully observe and pay attention to make sure he's not misinformationing us right where it hurts.
00:05:26.000 All right, Aaron, it's good to see you.
00:05:28.000 Good to see you too, Russell.
00:05:29.000 Happy to fill your quota of Maté family members and disinformation spreaders, so good to be here.
00:05:36.000 Thank you for coming on.
00:05:37.000 Straight after you, we're going to be speaking to Oswald Mosley, the far-right British politician from the 1940s and the starter of the Brownshirt movement.
00:05:47.000 See what he's got to say about stuff.
00:05:48.000 Mate, we wanted to talk to you actually about the expansion of NATO.
00:05:54.000 Finland recently joining NATO and also the sort of broad framing of NATO as a force for good in the world.
00:06:03.000 And if you wouldn't mind tying that all into the sort of current show trial of Donald Trump and how the exaggeration of these misdemeanors into felonies is a convenient way to maintain a convenient framing of American politics at a time when perhaps we could be looking at more important geopolitical issues.
00:06:24.000 Well, the indictment of Trump ties into issues like the expansion of NATO because back when Trump first broke into the political scene in 2015-2016, one of the things that he was saying that really freaked out the political establishment in the U.S.
00:06:40.000 and other NATO states like the U.K.
00:06:42.000 was that he was questioning the existence of NATO.
00:06:45.000 Uh, and people couldn't believe he, someone could possibly in the political spectrum say such a thing.
00:06:52.000 And I think that was one of the factors in all this freak out about Trump and all the motivation to then paint him as a Russian agent is because he was actually saying things that you're not supposed to say, uh, inside respectable NATO state politics.
00:07:08.000 And, uh, we've seen now in the real world, the results of NATO and this drive to expand it in this proxy war in Ukraine.
00:07:20.000 The fact we're having this war now is an outgrowth of a, you know, three-decade-long policy of pushing NATO to Russia's borders, trying to bring in states like Ukraine and Georgia, and doing so despite pledges to the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War that we're not going to expand NATO one more inch to the east, and that's been violated, and that's a major reason why we have this war today.
00:07:43.000 So, Finland joining the club is just one more provocation.
00:07:48.000 It's not to me as serious as the attempt to bring Ukraine in, because Ukraine has an actual historical tie to Russia.
00:07:55.000 There are millions of people inside Ukraine who consider themselves to be ethnic Russians.
00:08:00.000 Parts of Ukraine used to be apart.
00:08:03.000 Of Russia.
00:08:04.000 And Russian officials have long warned that any attempt to bring Ukraine into NATO would put Russia in a bad position because basically, as William Burns, the then ambassador to the US, wrote back in 2008, if Ukraine joins NATO, Russia feared that that would trigger a civil war and that would force Russia to intervene on the side of people who support Russia.
00:08:25.000 And that's pretty much what has happened.
00:08:27.000 And so Finland joining NATO, I don't think is Something Russia is too concerned about, but certainly expanding NATO's borders to Russia does increase the tensions.
00:08:40.000 And the idea that NATO is supposed to be defensive is just, as you've talked about, is a joke.
00:08:44.000 I mean, look at its recent record, destroying Libya, invading Afghanistan.
00:08:51.000 They have an explicit relationship with the military-industrial complex.
00:08:55.000 states. That's the real nature of NATO. The idea that it's there to protect people is just
00:09:00.000 completely undermined by its own record. RAOUL PAL: They have an explicit relationship with the
00:09:05.000 military industrial complex. Is there any evidence that they are involved in the brokerage of arms
00:09:12.000 deals that they facilitate that an expansion of NATO somehow leads to the expansion of the
00:09:17.000 military industrial complex? Also, Aaron, I just want to say that is fascinating. When Trump,
00:09:23.000 who I'm not broadly speaking a...
00:09:25.000 He's not something I blithely support.
00:09:27.000 I enjoy him as an establishment wrecking ball, I do have to say.
00:09:32.000 But when he sort of mentions something like, you know, don't have to be in NATO, there's something that I enjoy about that kind of anarchic and sort of outsider perspective.
00:09:43.000 So yeah, I just wonder if you can just talk about NATO's relationship with the military-industrial complex and the possibility of disbanding NATO.
00:09:51.000 Yeah, well, on Trump, I mean, that's why elites hate him so much.
00:09:56.000 Not because he's actually a threat to their agenda, but sometimes he blurts out the wrong things.
00:10:00.000 So he'll question the existence of NATO, while still policy-wise, he encourages NATO states to spend more on the military-industrial complex.
00:10:09.000 So policy-wise, he pretty much continued the NATO agenda, but sometimes, occasionally, he'll speak the truth.
00:10:15.000 And he'll say the wrong things.
00:10:17.000 Also, in Syria, for example, when he announced that US troops were staying after he initially tried to withdraw them, he said, we're staying to take the oil.
00:10:25.000 And you're not supposed to say that.
00:10:26.000 You're supposed to say we're there to fight terrorism and spread democracy.
00:10:28.000 So that's why they don't like him.
00:10:29.000 And that's why there's constantly attempts to undermine him, not because he's actual policy-wise, he's a threat to the conventional agenda, but because sometimes he just speaks out of turn.
00:10:40.000 And yes, in terms of NATO's relationship with the military-industrial complex, If you look at the multiple rounds of NATO expansion.
00:10:48.000 And how that's been received in the US Congress, which has to vote to approve these expansions.
00:10:53.000 Every time that happens, there's a massive influx of lobbying money by the military-industrial complex in support of NATO expansion, because the military-industrial complex recognizes that NATO expansion is hugely profitable for them.
00:11:07.000 Back in the 1990s, there was a lobby group in the US called the Committee to Expand NATO, or something like that.
00:11:14.000 And it was headed by a guy named Bruce Jackson.
00:11:16.000 But that wasn't Bruce Jackson's only job.
00:11:18.000 Bruce Jackson's day job was that he was a vice president at Lockheed Martin.
00:11:23.000 So he recognized that expanding NATO was very good for Lockheed Martin.
00:11:28.000 So yes, I mean, because if you expand NATO, your military has to be up to NATO standards, which means spending billions and billions of dollars on weapons.
00:11:40.000 So there is a huge connection there.
00:11:41.000 And that's why Jan Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary General, He's not really a general of anything.
00:11:47.000 He doesn't have a military role.
00:11:49.000 He's just basically an arms dealer.
00:11:51.000 He's an arms lobbyist.
00:11:52.000 That's what he is.
00:11:52.000 He's there to sell the public on the need to spend more money on weapons.
00:11:58.000 Aaron, you know, Russia arrested that Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gerskovich, and the Biden administration are up in arms saying you can't just arrest journalists and put them in prison without trial.
00:12:11.000 What do you think?
00:12:13.000 You can't just use the Espionage Act as a catch-all way of arresting people of dissident voices that you don't agree with or approve of.
00:12:21.000 What do you make of that while dear old Julian Assange is banged up in Belmarsh here in Blighty and dear Edward Snowden abides in exile in Russia?
00:12:32.000 Is there some hypocrisy there?
00:12:36.000 I mean, yes, I mean, I think this arrest of this Wall Street Journal happened just as Assange marked 1,000 days inside Belmarsh, this maximum security gulag inside Britain.
00:12:50.000 And that was on top of all the years he spent locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy because he couldn't leave, or else he would be Put in prison then.
00:12:59.000 So yes, of course, it's massively hypocritical.
00:13:01.000 It's a joke to see NATO state leaders in the US and UK and elsewhere complain about the arrest of this Wall Street Journal reporter.
00:13:10.000 And it's just like, I can't even think about a song sometimes it's so depressing.
00:13:15.000 I don't know how you feel about it but it's so depressing.
00:13:18.000 It's like I have to try and think there must be something I'm not understanding about this because otherwise it shows that aside from aesthetics We do live in a kind of banalised tyranny, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to put journalists in prison without trial and claim it was somehow legitimate.
00:13:39.000 So yeah, I went to see Julian Assange when he was in that embassy.
00:13:44.000 He later described that in his diaries as the worst day of his incarceration.
00:13:49.000 I'm in touch with Julian Assange's wife, and I feel like it's, in a way, I hold on to the idea of Assange and Snowden when I'm attacked for being far-right or a conspiracy theorist, because they're kind of the ace, aren't they?
00:14:08.000 They're dual aces in the pack.
00:14:10.000 You know your liberal, righteous agenda?
00:14:13.000 What is it doing about this, and why can't it address it?
00:14:17.000 It's kind of a Vulcan death grip on their bullshit, because they have to sort of go, They have to sort of shut down the debate there.
00:14:26.000 And that's when you know what the establishment is.
00:14:28.000 So I suppose, aside from the sort of deep personal agony that they as a family and the individuals must be facing, I feel that they are sort of avatars of what the reality of our sort of deep state corruption is.
00:14:44.000 Absolutely.
00:14:45.000 I mean, no one in the world has done more to expose state crimes than Julian Assange.
00:14:49.000 And Forest Services, rather than being given every journalistic award in the world, which he deserves, he's being caged in a gulag with no sign of him being able to get out.
00:15:02.000 I think the plan From those torturing him and imprisoning him, it's just to hold him for as long as they can behind bars and hope he dies behind bars.
00:15:11.000 That seems to be the plan.
00:15:13.000 And the media in the U.S.
00:15:16.000 especially is totally complicit in this.
00:15:18.000 There are sometimes, you know, establishment journals speak up in defense of Julian, but not nearly to the level that they should be.
00:15:24.000 And they still run all these smear pieces That take part in the propaganda effort to demonize him and so it and we're all just sitting by and watching it happen as you know this the most important Journalist in I think in Western history is being murdered tortured It's it's just unbelievable.
00:15:45.000 And so yes, so what Russia has done to this Wall Street Journal reporter is By all accounts, it looks terrible.
00:15:53.000 I do, though, have to question the wisdom of his editors who sent this reporter to a really sensitive Russian military industrial complex site and asking questions of people.
00:16:05.000 They must have known that this would arouse suspicion from Russian authorities and would possibly put this reporter in danger.
00:16:12.000 So, I hope, of course, that he's freed Uh, you know, immediately.
00:16:17.000 But I do have to question the wisdom of whoever sent him to this really sensitive site to ask these questions, especially at a time of such high tensions between the U.S.
00:16:24.000 and Russia.
00:16:25.000 People are going to be used as pawns to negotiate for the release of other prisoners, and it looks like this Wall Street Journal reporter has gotten caught up in that.
00:16:33.000 Yeah, well, you would say that, Aaron, because you are a conspiracy theorist and you never miss an opportunity to attack the establishment.
00:16:41.000 Aaron, I'm going to have to wrap it up there.
00:16:42.000 It's always fantastic to speak with you.
00:16:44.000 Thank you for your honesty and your wisdom and your ongoing integrity.
00:16:48.000 Aaron Maté is an investigative journalist for the Grey Zone and co-host of the Useful Idiots podcast.
00:16:53.000 We'll put a link to both of those in the chat straight away.
00:16:56.000 Aaron, thanks for joining us, mate.
00:16:58.000 Thanks Russell.
00:16:59.000 Cheers, take it easy.
00:17:00.000 I always feel mad saying mate to a mate because their name is spelt mate but that has got that accent on it that makes it mate.
00:17:08.000 Do you know who's coming on tomorrow?
00:17:10.000 Go on.
00:17:10.000 Gabor Mate.
00:17:11.000 No.
00:17:12.000 Another day, another mate.
00:17:14.000 Every single day we talk to a mate until there are no more mates.
00:17:18.000 What's a mate mate?
00:17:20.000 Tomorrow we're going to be talking to Gabor Mate having an in-depth conversation that's At here, our Stay Free HQ.
00:17:28.000 If you want to come and see me live at Stay Free HQ, you can.
00:17:31.000 I'm going to be talking to, and this is live, I don't think we're even going to broadcast this now.
00:17:35.000 We probably will broadcast it in some form.
00:17:36.000 It's not another matter, is it?
00:17:38.000 It's not.
00:17:39.000 It's Brian McDermott, former Premier League manager and my personal friend who has recently just joined NATO.
00:17:46.000 He's being militarised even as you speak.
00:17:48.000 Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are putting missiles all up and down the nape of his neck and they're... I'm sorry to say that they're aimed at Russia.
00:17:56.000 So that's going to provoke even more problems.
00:17:59.000 You can come and see me talking to Brian McDermott about his recent membership of NATO on Saturday, April 15th.
00:18:05.000 Doors at six, tickets 45 quid.
00:18:07.000 All profits go to the Stay Free Foundation, which I own and keep.
00:18:11.000 No, I don't keep them.
00:18:11.000 We give them to drug addicts.
00:18:13.000 That's where that money goes.
00:18:14.000 We don't need no more money.
00:18:16.000 Hey, listen, thank you very much for joining us, Gareth.
00:18:20.000 Let people know Brian McDermott and a bit of context there or?
00:18:23.000 Yeah he's going to be talking about, alright I will.
00:18:25.000 Brian McDermott used to play for Arsenal, top flight football club.
00:18:28.000 He managed Reading when they got to the Premier League.
00:18:31.000 He managed Leeds, one of the biggest clubs in this country and he's talking about mental health, winning and losing and how our framing of success is built on materialistic and individualistic notions.
00:18:42.000 Rather than on community and connection.
00:18:45.000 And from his personal experience as a top flight athlete and manager, he tells us that winning and losing have to be accepted as part of life.
00:18:53.000 And you can't tether your identity to external success and plaudits.
00:18:57.000 You have to find a deeper connection with meaning and purpose.
00:19:01.000 Nice.
00:19:02.000 But he would say that because NATO... Exactly.
00:19:05.000 They told him to say that.
00:19:06.000 Told him to.
00:19:06.000 Probably Raytheon, Lockheed Martin.
00:19:08.000 They've probably gotten in his ear as well.
00:19:09.000 Of course they have.
00:19:10.000 Of course they have.
00:19:11.000 They're not fools, these people, are they?
00:19:14.000 Hey, thank you very much for joining us for the show.
00:19:16.000 We've got one more show this week before we take a little well-deserved break, but we'll continue to put out content every single day while our Lord Jesus Christ is resurrected As if by magic, something beyond magic, the miraculous.
00:19:31.000 Almost as if there is a field of unmanifest energy that can be channeled and directed by us if we are able to overcome the limitations of the self.
00:19:37.000 And that is real, Gareth.
00:19:38.000 Don't Gareth Roy look to the side there as if negatively, I would say, well, I've seen that's not defiance.
00:19:46.000 That's pure loathing.
00:19:47.000 That's what that is.
00:19:48.000 Join us tomorrow.
00:19:49.000 Not for more of the same, but for more of the different.